A ritual hazing ...

When San Franciscans elect prosecutors who the city establishment and most especially the police union fear will be less than completely hostile to offenders, they pounce early and hard to discipline the new official.

Senator Kamala Harris could testify to this. In 2004, as the newly elected D.A., she did what she'd run saying she'd do -- she refused to demand the death penalty for David Hill -- a young criminal who had killed a cop. (No, not the other way around -- cop kills citizen -- as has happened too frequently in recent years.) She instead asked a sentence of life without parole. This was treason to her detractors. The police union, the victim's family, the local media, and Senator Dianne Feinstein all went ballistic. They could not accept the possibility that justice could be done without the death penalty.

Now newly elected District Attorney Chesa Boudin is receiving the outrage treatment for his decision to put charges against a suspect on hold while his office investigates the entirety of the circumstances in which this defendant is charged with attacking cops who then shot him. The charges could come back if they seem warranted. The cops who shot the guy (with the result he has had his leg amputated) can't very well serve as witnesses until their own conduct has been evaluated, can they? A fair-minded observer might think so. But the city establishment is horrified.

I think it is fair to say that Harris learned her lesson; to advance politically she needed to avoid stirring up such a hornet's nest again -- and she didn't in her subsequent career. She continued to "oppose the death penalty" but avoided any chance to do anything about it either while D.A. or from her later perch as state Attorney General. I didn't follow her career in law enforcement closely; some progressives in the legal world were rabid about what they saw as her failures to advance justice when she ran for president.

Somehow I don't think Chesa Boudin will learn to back off after the current howling in some city quarters. He ran against precisely the unequal justice he has seen in the system as public defender. He doesn't seem to want to give either cops or crooks an unfair break -- something which some who have been accustomed to special treatment will experience with shock. And so far there's no suggestion Boudin is using the D.A. office as a platform from which to leap to a higher office. He seems to actually want the job he just won. San Franciscans can hope he'll make a success of it.